fyzygy

Building hospitals would have been a better investment ... than Astra-Zeneca. But I see no mad rush to bolster the health system -- only the failing economic one.

Placebo effect?

https://scitechdaily.com/psychedelic-drug-psilocybin-magic-mushrooms-spurs-growth-of-neural-connections-lost-in-depression/

The only time my tinnitus has ever disappeared, more or less completely, was for a few hours after local anaesthesia from a dental procedure. Anyone can report on tinnitus effects or therapeutic benefits of dissociative anaesthetics?

Great to hear, confirmation of existing studies that show passiflora spp. useful in treating various addictions, including nicotine. A friend had some (rogue passionfruit rootstock) that was accidentally cut & withered on the vine, in full sun. That batch tasted a lot like tobacco, to me.

Tricho bridgesii var. lageniformis forma Elongatus. [...] grows over 1 m high, grows very slow, very big white flowers. [!] https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/402887922223

I guess City Lights was there at the inception of the (self-styled) psychedelic revolution -- Leary, Ginsberg, Burroughs, et al. Michael Pollan about as far removed as one can imagine from that earlier milieu--perhaps strategically so, given the legal and political backlash against 60s counterculture which quelled psychedelic research for half a century. It's great to see City Lights still a hub of psychedelic culture; Ferlinghetti would no doubt have approved. Though I do wonder about cultural elites who serve as gatekeepers, the likes of Pollan (at least, that's my impression of him, having heard him lecture on psychedelics once before). I will try & give these videos a run, thanks trucha for linking. Shine on, City Lights!

Thanks - must be the only link I didn't try!

Has anybody still got a copy of this to share?

Yes, clean water and food... https://www.eatinganimalscausespandemics.com

I have suffered tinnitus, the result of an ear infection & ruptured eardrum, for almost 20 years. Recently I was reading on a Tinnitus forum how some people claimed that psilocybin had helped or even cured their tinnitus. Others claimed the reverse effect -- that psilocybin made their tinnitus worse. I seem to fall into the latter camp, with an uncomfortable amplification of my tinnitus under the influence of psilocybin in particular. Now, I wonder if this effect could vary depending on the source (different mushroom species, for example). The worst of all my tinnitus episodes preceded what I suspect was an episode of Wood Lover Paralysis. I'm still astonished that an internal perception of sound -- with no external vibrational sound source -- could be so frighteningly painful. I think treatment of tinnitus is a promising avenue for therapeutic psychedelic research. Anyone else have experiences to share of tinnitus (ringing in the ears) as part of their experience?

Control is the ideological fantasy, in a complex world of unintended consequences. Having escaped & mutated, the polio vaccine has more recently become the leading cause of polio: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/06/28/534403083/mutant-strains-of-polio-vaccine-now-cause-more-paralysis-than-wild-polio

https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/coronavirus-and-philosophers/?fbclid=IwAR1wyD5z7iP8MjqXkJXDifNaZ7qBZSavluXT53aNMWiwJfFTOzoGf_2sCL8 Crucial insights lost on the mainstream media.

Vaccination is one strategy for dealing with viral outbreaks. It is by no means the only strategy, just the ready-to-hand "no-brainer" that promises to revive a moribund global economy. I see vaccination as primarily an economic, rather than a public-health intervention. Greg Hunt and ScoMo used it as a political smokescreen from Day One. We all have a right (if not a duty) to be skeptical. Health practitioners and scientists cannot speak to the ethics of western biomedical research and development. They are too enmeshed in their own disciplines, and seldom formally instructed in more holistic approaches. Contemporary virology and immunology are both predicated on human and animal suffering. I left clues to this in a previous post. But despite the "safety" and "efficacy" of the various vaccines, I am yet to hear the slightest detail of their respective bioethical credentials. We could learn a lot from Covid-19, but instead we see it as entirely Other, an enemy to be defeated at any cost -- and that's a glaring defect of western culture more broadly. For me it's a matter of ethical and political choice. A pox on anyone who discounts these fundamental freedoms "in the name of" X, Y or Z. But I would certainly not deny the right of others to participate, if that's their preference. Neither would I criticise (let alone condemn) such an eminently personal decision. We still have much to learn from Covid-19: about sustainable politics, economics, and bioethics, for starters.